I was chatting with a friend last night and he mentioned that many people who have been caught abusing the system e.g falsifying disability allowance, etc. in other words caught committing fraud, are now just offering to return the money and requesting not to be convicted.
The government agencies responsible for prosecuting them are now in a difficult position caused by the precedent of the current spate of expenses fraud with MPs with no prosecutions - so I wonder what will happen???
Inconsistency in the appication of law and the amount of backbone the CPS has at any one time is not a new phenomenon.
Not to mention it's often the case that discrepancy can be down to application of policy differences, not neccessarily discrepancies in law as shown only yesterday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8081540.stm
Rejecting Mr Lee's application - first launched at the beginning of the year - the judge ruled the issues raised by him were matters for parliament and not for the courts.
So one law some and another for the rest?
'twas ever thus.
The MP's haven't been committing fraud
Bimbler - in some cases that's yet to be tested.
Did you see that u****ing despicable Blears last night waving a cheque around saying she was going to pay back HMR&C. Well fan-u****ing-tastic, thanks for that. You steel money, defraud the system then want to be painted a ucking Saint when you offer to pay it back.
You see - that's where Ronnie Briggs went wrong - he ran when he should have given the money back and got a pat on the back from the PM.
Total and utter c*cks, the lot of them.
[i]Ronnie Briggs [/i] who he? Ronnie Biggs? The one with the cosh?
Yeah yeah, that's the one. Mr Biggs.
Of course I wasn't being entirely serious when saying he should have been able to get away with what he did. Tongue was firmly in cheek.
Mmm MPs not commiting fraud?
Re giving money to the tax man, as my mum said: What do you think the tax man is going to do when you start sending in checques for taxes that havent been levied? They'll be carnage in the filing room and more paperwork than you can shake a stick at! 🙂
What happens to the money that's paid back?
Not tricky at all. The fraudsters should be prosecuted, and so should the ordinary people who've been caught abusing the benefits system.
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It's a fair point. I see no reason why not to prosecute those who have been claiming for things that clearly are not true. I dont really agree with complaining about those who claimed real things that are within the rules as they have done nothing criminally wrong.
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Prosecutions of MPs that have committed offences will take time. Months not weeks. I would be very surprised if there are none. However there is a big difference between immoral fiddling of expenses without breaking the law and fraud.
I would suggest that the ones who claimed for mortgage payments on houses they no longer owned would be open to fraud allegations...
I keep getting letters from the Inland Revenue. I tried telling them that I didn't want to join but they're having none of it.